10 Actionable ways to include images in your blog

Tag Archives: Blog Tips

While blogging capitalizes on one’s writing skills, it’s not all about words. It needs a small level of visual element that follows the same rationale why books need pictures as well. For both blogs and books, images can get readers’ interest, as well as give their mind some time to recover from taking in a lot of words. Images really are important so it’s best to include them in your blogs.

Here are 10 actionable ways on how to include images to your blogs:

1. Use images with faces.

Faces are interesting subjects and would definitely get the reader’s attention and keep it for a while. We are also predisposed to look at faces more than any other visual image so photos with faces are great to put on blogs.

In your About section, it’s great if you can place your picture, or if you are a team of bloggers, the whole team.

Be careful though at where to put photos with faces. Studies on eye-tracking show that humans tend to follow the direction where a photo with a face is looking at. So in cases where the image you have is facing the right, it’s best to put the image on the left and the text on the right.

2. Memes are also effective in conveying information and humor.

Memes are certainly things of the modern-day. They bring humor and are definitely appreciated in the online world. You can make use of popular memes or you can make new ones. Just remember to use appropriate memes. Stay clear of memes that might be offensive.

3. Optimize image sizes for your blog and social media sharing

You must consider that almost everything needs to be shareable now. Ensure that your images from your blog and ready to be shared on social media. Make sure, however, that your images are of great quality, and are worth sharing. Sprout Social has prepared an always up-to-date guide on social media image sizes. Refer to this blog post to check the optimum size that you should use for different social media channels.

Diagrams are very helpful, especially if you’re talking about a lot of numbers. You may use graphs and charts as you see necessary. Instead of boring the hell out of your readers, use these kinds of diagrams as you see fit.

5. Use infographics for data-laden posts

If you went even further down with research and got a lot of substantial data, you might need to use infographics. Infographics are usually independent, making them very shareable on their own. Craft a decent-infographic but still try to come up with text to explain it. However, ensure that your infographic can truly stand on its own.

6. Leave a mark with quotes.

A lot of quotes, instead of being written, are turned into images. The quotes are still in words but are in the form of an image instead of being part of the text of the blog. This makes the quote more memorable and allows for being shared.

Doing it this way helps the quote stand out more. This is also best for announcements, or some other text that needs attention but doesn’t exactly have a photo or image equivalent.

7. Screenshot images as an alternative to videos

Especially when coming up with instructive blogs, screenshots can serve as an alternative to videos. Videos would have been a good choice but not all platforms would allow videos. Videos would also need little to not text so as far as blogs are concerned, going for screenshots of step-by-step instructions is the best way to put it. Sometimes, videos take time to load, so using screenshots is an easier alternative, as shown above. Screenshots give readers a more concrete idea in just a sec. It’s also easier to believe in screenshots than written words or infographics.

8. Use more images in the post for “rebreather”

A lot of readers just scan through blogs. Images can help keep this kind of audience interested. It’s really just like for books too. To make them interested, put pictures. This is especially true for long blog posts. You’ll need pictures to make them stay and read the rest of the blog.

9. Establish your own style and implement it consistently.

There’s a lot of ways you can use images on your blog. You can actually use it as your own style. It may be on the kind of images you use, or it may be that you use a specific character as your images. It really depends on what you aim to use, and how you want your audience to recognize and remember you. For example, if you’re using flat images, stick to it. If you’re using vector art or isometric images, consistently use it in your blog posts. Check out how AltusHost content marketing crew create their own blog post featured images. There’s consistency in the style of designing their images.

10. Stuck with no images? Go stock.

With everything mentioned above, you might be wondering how you’ll source all these images for your blog. If you do not have a gallery of your own, and you do not have the time and resources to take photos as you need them, then you can go with stock photos. There are lots of stock images around, just dig in, so you can find decent-looking ones. This might be a challenge, but this is the best you’ve got. Using stock photos is still better than having no image at all.

Bonus: Don’t get yourself sued!

There are lots of good photos on the Internet and you might be tempted to use the best one you can find, but not all photos can be used without the permission of the owner. Some companies make use of tools that scan the web for sites that use their images without permission, and then you’ll be asked to pay.

To save you from being sued, do not use photos that are bounded by usage rights. Google Images have an option to filter out such images. Flickr also has a filter of images without a Creative Commons license – an indication that an image is free for use.

The use of photos in a blog is great, but not when you’ll be sued for it!

About the author: Erin Feldman helps companies create value with analytics and data science by improving business performance, increasing revenue, reducing cost, boosting profitability, and increasing customer satisfaction. She owns her own online store located in California, USA. Her vision is to help small to medium businesses set up their own predictive data analytics, that will tremendously help their online efforts in marketing, revenue generation, and beyond.

We are living in an age so abundant with information that it’s quite difficult to set yourself apart from the crowd and reach the auditorium you are targeting. This is why good writing is simply not enough to make you a successful blogger. A great blog post isn’t merely a block of text, it needs to be optimized to attract attention and engage an audience.

If you do not manage to convince your audience that your content is worth the reading time, they will simply skip it, which means you wasted your time researching, writing, proofreading and posting your article. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your engagement rate from optimizing your title, including proper paragraphing, further reading links, sources and so on.

Still, one of the most potent aspects of a blog post are the photos that you use to boost its visual appeal. Let’s look at some statistics that show how much carefully picked photos can impact the engagement an article will have, shall we?

Visual Content Marketing Statistics

Research shows that a piece of content that is supported by appropriate and relevant photos will have an astonishing 80% more chance to engage a reader. Information retention is also a lot higher when there is visual aspects included into the content to support the text. If a piece of information is backed up by a relevant picture, the retention of information in the next three goes up to 60% instead of the average 10%.

As far as engagement goes, relevant photos paired up with good content get as much as 94% more engagement than those without photos. While it might seem that acquiring relevant photos is expensive and cumbersome, it doesn’t have to be if you rely on the right resources. We’re going to suggest a few websites you can use to get the visual content that you need.

These guys have it all. Pixabay offers you a wide variety of (mostly) attribution free photos to choose from and the website is searchable as well. You can get what you need on the fly and their photos are of great quality.

If you are of a mind to build your own stock photo archive, Little Visuals is probably your best bet. They have quite a unique approach. You sign up via email and they send you a .zip file every week, with no attribution required. You don’t get to pick, but you get your own archive after a while.

If you are aiming for very high-resolution photos this might be your best bet. The site is well-designed and easy to use. They have a lot of food-themed stock photos, so it’s perfect for a food related website, blog, etc.

If you are feeling lucky and/or are not sure what exactly you are looking for then this is the right option for you. Picography is a scroll-through website with random photos to choose from and no search button or categorization in sight. The good news is that they require absolutely no attribution and when you find what you need your work is done.

Yes, Flickr, if you are too picky about your photos and willing to be careful with attribution it is a pretty decent website to get stock photos for your content. Their search is great and they have a tremendous archive.

Well, with 50 high-quality stock photos added to their archive on a daily basis Pexels is becoming quite a popular choice for people who are searching for free photos with no attribution requirement. The content is searchable and you can even pick from popular tags. What more can you ask for?

Don’t just pick one. Use all of them to find the perfect photographs for the content you created. Take your time and consider that giving attribution from time to time isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you can’t find what you need in these archive you might consider paying a photographer to get you exactly what you have in mind, since your needs surpass the ability of regular photography.

Go for a good fit and don’t go all artistic when you pick out your stock photos. After all, they are there to boost your content, not be your own design expression. Keep things practical and your content will bloom.